This study surveyed 212 first-generation college students regarding their perceptions of psychological need satisfaction in college, beliefs, and experiences of need support and engagement in a college classroom. Students partially fulfilled course requirements through their participation and received no other compensation. After describing the characteristics of this sample, I discuss the procedures used to collect data through an online survey and prepare responses for analysis. I then describe the measures used in this study. Next, I provide an overview of the quantitative analysis procedure that I used to address my first three research questions. This is followed by a discussion of how qualitative survey responses were analyzed to address my fourth research question, as well as a section on my efforts to ensure the trustworthiness of qualitative findings. Finally, I address my rationale for the mixed-method design of this study and my approach to integration across methodological strands.
PARTICIPANT CHARACTERISTICS
Table 1 presents sample descriptive statistics for age, grade level (ranging from 1, Freshman, to 4, Senior), and GPA on the university’s four-point scale for achievement.
Table 1. Sample descriptive statistics: age, grade level, and GPA.
Range Mean Standard
Deviation
Age (in years) 17 - 68 21.13 4.16
Grade level (college year) 1 - 4 3.23 0.95
Participants in this study tended to be older undergraduates (mean age=21 years) who were further along in their studies (on average, early in the third year). A total of 7 participants were over age 24, in an age group often associated with characteristics of non- traditional students such as financial independence and delayed college enrollment after high school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015). Each increasing grade level constituted a larger percentage of the sample: freshman (6.6%), sophomore (16.0%), junior (25.5%), and senior (51.9%). This overrepresentation of upperclassmen mirrored the larger subject pool, which drew potential participants from five elective courses. Participants reported a broad range of academic achievement, with an average GPA (3.23) in the “B” range of the University’s plus/minus letter grade scale.
Table 2 (on the following page) provides the number and percentage of participants who reported each category of sex, race/ethnicity, and parent educational attainment. For comparison, the third column of the table lists overall percentages at the university where data was available (The University of Texas at Austin, 2018). Relative to the broader university population, a greater percentage of the participants in this study identified their sex as female (72%) and a smaller percentage identified their race/ethnicity as Caucasian or European-American (17.5%). In this sample of first-generation students, a high school diploma or GED was the most commonly reported level of parental educational attainment. The sample included 5 international students who reported their countries of origin as Mexico (2), China (2), and Singapore (1). Only 20 participants (9.4%) reported that they had participated in a university program designed for first-generation students. Participants’ perceived positions on the Social Class Ladder were distributed around the middle of the scale (see Figure 1). On a scale where 0 and 10 respectively represented the lowest and highest levels of socioeconomic status, the sample average was 4.98 (median=5.00) with a standard deviation of 1.66.
Table 2. Sample descriptive statistics: sex, race/ethnicity, parent education level. Demographic characteristics Number within sample Percentage of sample (n=212) Percentage at larger University Sex Female 153 72.2% 52.7% Male 58 27.4% 47.3% Non-binary 1 0.5% -- Race/Ethnicity African-American/Black 11 5.2% 4.0% Hispanic /Latino/Chicano 84 39.6% 20.9% Asian/Asian-American 59 27.8% 19.0% Caucasian/European-American 37 17.5% 41.1% Middle Eastern/Arab-American 1 0.5% -- Biracial/Multiracial 20 9.4% 2.6% Mother's highest level of education
Did not complete high school 58 27.2% --
High school diploma or GED 80 37.6% --
Some college 52 24.4% --
Associate's or 2-year degree 22 10.3% --
Father's highest level of education
Did not complete high school 57 26.8% --
High school diploma or GED 77 36.2% --
Some college 57 26.8% --
Associate's or 2-year degree 16 7.5% --
Unknown 5 2.3% --
DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE
All participants in this study were recruited during the Fall 2018 semester through the subject pool of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Based on the subject pool’s initial screening survey, 404 individuals (29.6% of the 1,361 undergraduates in the subject pool) had self-identified as first-generation undergraduate students and thus were eligible to participate in the study. Through the subject pool’s online system, eligible students received a written description of the study and a link to the online survey. Upon opening the survey link, participants were presented with a written consent form. The consent form stated that the study would involve an online survey and require participants to spend roughly 45 minutes responding to questions about their beliefs, classroom experiences, and motivation as college students. The consent form also informed participants of the confidentiality of responses, their ability to cease participation at any time, and the research team’s email and telephone contact information in case the study raised questions or concerns.
The survey immediately began when participants clicked to indicate their understanding of the consent form and agreement to participate. Instructions and measures were presented in nine survey sections designed to proceed from general questions (about student demographics and trait-level variables) to college experiences, and ultimately to experiences within a specific class. The survey flow is presented on the following page in Table 3, which shows sections, key instructions, and associated measures at a glance. Each section represented a webpage, and participants were required to respond to all questions in one section before proceeding to the next. Please see Appendix B for the complete survey as it was presented to participants. After completing the survey, participants sent an email to request subject pool credit for participation, which was granted within 24 hours.
Table 3. Survey flow with key instructions and associated measures.
Section Key instructions Associated Measures
1. Consent form By clicking to proceed, participants indicate that they have read the information and wish to participate.
N/A
2. Demographic items
Participants must complete all questions regarding
background characteristics.
11 items: Age, gender, race/ethnicity, SES, parent educational attainment, grade level, international status, major. participation in programs, GPA 1 item: MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (Adler, Epel, Castellazo, & Ickovics, 2000) 3. Autonomy
orientations and self-construal
Participants are instructed to think about their experiences in general and rate agreement using a 7-point scale.
8 items: Asserted and Assisted Autonomy Orientation (Legault et al., 2017a)
10 items: Independent and Interdependent Self- Construal (D’Amico & Scrima, 2016)
4. Pre-college messages about college and motives for college
Participants are instructed to reflect on messages received about college before attending university. Participants rate endorsement of motives for college using a 7-point scale.
3 items: After a researcher-created prompt, open- response items require participants to briefly describe the content of and source of each message about college.
12 items: Interdependent and Independent Motives for Attending College (Stephens et al., 2012) 5. Open-response
questions
regarding college experiences
Participants are instructed to take their time to carefully read and answer each open- response question.
6 items: Researcher-created questions regarding three experiences of psychological need
satisfaction and participants’ response to three experiences of need frustration
6. Overall need satisfaction in college
Participants are instructed to reflect on their overall college experience and rate
agreement on a 7-point scale.
13 items: Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction at College Scale (Jenkins-Guarnieri, Vaughan, & Wright, 2015)
7. Identification of a specific course
Participants are asked to identify a specific class to focus on for the next section.
5 items: class name, course number, whether class is within students’ major, personal importance on scale of 1-7, estimated class size
8. Classroom supportive practices and engagement Participants focus on experiences in a specific class, and rate agreement using a 7-point scale.
18 items: Perceived teacher behaviors
19 items: Academic Engagement Scale (Reeve, 2013) and additional items for agentic engagement (Mameli & Passini, 2018)
9. Survey conclusion
Participants must email to confirm participation
SURVEY RESPONSES: DATA PREPARATION AND RESPONSE QUALITY
Barge and Gehlbach (2012) discussed how survey responses often have observable indicators of participants’ satisficing, or minimizing the investment of their effort and attention. These indicators include non-response to survey items (through skipping items or attrition), time elapsed from start to finish, and non-differentiation (where the same level of endorsement is selected across items).
Participants were not allowed to skip items in this study’s survey, but they were free to quit taking the survey at any time. Accordingly, responses showed some evidence of attrition. The initial page of the survey was a consent form that was submitted 267 times. In 7 of these instances, no other information was recorded beyond the consent form, in 6 cases, participants only responded through the demographic items, in 8 cases participants only responded until the fourth section (stopping short of the open-response questions), and in 2 cases participants completed qualitative items but stopped during the next section which presented measures pertaining to a specific class. Only the final question of the survey asked participants to provide unique identification (their university ID) in order to receive credit for participation. Thus a total of 23 cases of attrition were excluded from analysis because I could not identify whether they represented duplicate responses from participants who later completed the survey.
Of the remaining 244 complete responses, two participants had fully responded to all survey questions twice. Only their first response was retained, leaving 242 survey responses. I chose to do this rather than averaging/combining responses for three reasons. First, in both cases the participants had chosen to focus on different classes/instructors in their second survey attempt. Second, their qualitative responses were similar or identical between attempts. Third, ideally these participants would not have been able to access the
survey a second time, because previously viewing items may have influenced their responses during the second administration of the survey.
Although only participants identified as first-generation from the subject pool’s screening procedure were invited to participate in this study, 29 participants who took the survey indicated that their mother or father earned a college degree. One additional participant was a graduate student. These participants were excluded from the sample for failing to meet eligibility criteria. Among the remaining 212 responses, 16 (7.5%) included a failed attention check, introducing concern about participants’ potential non- differentiation among response options. For those participants who failed the attention check, their open-ended responses were retained for the qualitative analysis. Their quantitative responses were also retained for every analysis that relied on correlation and regression, although their impact on each analysis was investigated with a sensitivity study.
MEASURES
The survey began with a demographic questionnaire to capture information about student characteristics including age, gender, racial or ethnic identification(s), mother’s highest level of education completed, father’s highest level of education completed, socioeconomic status, current grade level classification in university, and international student status. Students were asked to identify their academic majors, report cumulative GPA, and indicate yes/no to whether they participated in specific programs designed for first generation students at the University.
Perceived Socioeconomic Status
As part of the demographic questionnaire, participants responded to the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, an item designed to assess an individual’s perceived
position relative to others in society (Adler, Epel, Castellazo, & Ickovics, 2000). The measure has been widely used by researchers in studies of various social groups in and out of the U.S. (Wolff, Acevedo-Garcia, Subramanian, Weber, & Kawachi, 2010). The original instrument presents an image of a ladder with 10 rungs with the instructions to “think of this ladder as representing where people stand in our society. At the top of the ladder are the people who are the best off, those who have the most money, most education, and best jobs. At the bottom are the people who are the worst off, those who have the least money, least education, and worst jobs or no job.” Participants indicate where they believe they stand on the ladder using a number ranging from 1 (for the bottom rung) to 10 (for the very top rung). For the present study, the instructions were modified so that an image of the ladder was not included, but the scale retained its original range. Participants were asked to indicate the number that best reflected their situation.
Assisted and Asserted Autonomy
Asserted and assisted autonomy were measured with 8 items (four items to represent each one of the asserted and assisted subscales) developed by Legault et al. (2017a). In a sample of adults from the U.S. population (n=248, 81% White, 6.5 % Black, 6.9% Asian, 3.3% Latino, 2.4% Other), the subscales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha was .84 for assisted autonomy, .81 for asserted autonomy). As previously discussed in my literature review, Legault et al.’s scale validation relied on a sample drawn from the general population and ultimately supported the assumption of two latent factors. When the authors examined the associations between these subscales and theoretically related constructs, they found that the autonomy orientations were weakly associated with each other, and that asserted autonomy was significantly associated with
independence while assisted autonomy was associated with interdependence on a measure of self-construal (Singelis, 1994).
Using data collected during a pilot survey, I investigated the properties of the autonomy orientations scale. Although a confirmatory factor analysis did not support a two-factor model for the data obtained, an exploratory factor analysis did show an expected pattern of item loadings on two factors. (A detailed account of measures investigated with pilot study data is available in Appendix A.) In the sample recruited for my primary investigation, Cronbach’s alphas for the asserted (.80) and assisted (.79) orientation scales indicated acceptable reliability. Although the scale’s original authors did not find a significant association between the two orientations in their sample from the general population, in my sample of first-generation students participants’ scores on the two factors were significantly and positively correlated (r = 0.52, p < .001). To further examine the orientations as constructs, I attempted to replicate the autonomy orientations’ patterns of association with independent and interdependent self-construal that was reported by Legault et al. (2017a). In contrast to their findings, in my sample of first-generation students independent self-construal was significantly and positively associated with the asserted (r = 0.53, p < .001) and assisted (r = .48, p < .001) autonomy orientations, while interdependent self-construal was only associated with the assisted autonomy orientation (r = .18, p < .001). Chapter four presents these results in the context of my first research question, and chapter five contains a discussion of this unexpected pattern of association between orientations and self-construals in my sample of first-generation students.
Interdependent or Independent Self-construal
Alongside the motives for attending college, participants were presented with a shortened measure of independent and interdependent values (D’Amico & Scrima, 2016)
that was based on the Singelis Self-Construal Scale (Singelis, 1994). I measured self- construal in order to examine whether students’ motives for attending college are positively associated with the theoretical self-construal that underlies these motives, especially given my modifications to the measure of motives. The original form of the Self-Construal Scale contains 30 items designed to assess independent versus interdependent self-construal. However, I reduced the length of the scale help mitigate participants’ survey fatigue. D’Amico and Scrima (2016) developed a shortened, 10-item version of the Self-Construal Scale relying on samples of European university students. Observing that the original version presented a wide range of personal characteristics, the researchers attempted to reduce the scale to items that emphasized independence or interdependence in decisions and behaviors. For example, independent items include “I do my own thing, regardless of what others think” and “I act the same way no matter who I am with,” while interdependent items include “I often have the feeling that my relationships with others are more important than my own accomplishments” and “I will sacrifice my self-interest for the benefit of the group I am in.”
Although shortening scales tends to reduce the internal consistency of measures, each 5-item subscale still demonstrated acceptable reliability (Cronbach’s alpha was .74 for the independent subscale; .72 for the interdependent subscale). Scores on the 10-item scales for independence and interdependence were strongly associated with scores on the expanded scales (correlations were .85, with a 99% confidence interval of .80-.89 for the independent scale; and .92, with a 99% confidence interval of .89-.94 for the interdependent scale). Additional evidence that reducing scale length did not reduce concurrent validity included that the scales were not significantly associated with each other, and responses collected via the shortened scale showed similar or improved fit to the theoretical model when both the shortened and full-length scales were subjected to
confirmatory factor analysis. Despite the shortcomings of assuming a dichotomy between independent and interdependent values, the self-construal scales were an important means to evaluate my measure for student motives and situate results in the existing literature. In my sample, Cronbach’s alpha was acceptable for the independent subscale (.72) but questionable for the interdependent subscale (.62).
Independent or Interdependent Motives for Attending College
In line with previous research with first-generation student populations, I used a 12-item measure of students’ independent versus interdependent motives for attending college (Stephens et al., 2012). This measure was central to literature on first-generation students that informed much of the rationale for my study. In previous studies using this scale, students were asked to select which motives they have for attending college from a list of 12 items. Half of these items represent interdependent motives for attending college such as “to help my family out after I’m done with college” and “to give back to my community.” The other half were designed to represent independent motives for attending college such as “to learn more about my interests” and “to become an independent thinker.” Summing the number of items endorsed on each scale provided an overall score ranging from 0-6. I altered the measure for my study so that participants rated their personal endorsement of each motive for attending college on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all important) to 7 (extremely important). My rationale for this change was that variability in the degree to which a student endorses any particular motive is obscured when the motives are presented in a checklist format. Cronbach’s alpha indicated acceptable internal consistency reliability for the scales measuring Independent (.89) and Interdependent (.84) Motives for College.
Perceived Supports and Strategies for Need Satisfaction
Participants were presented with 6 open-ended questions developed for the current study. These items were designed to elicit salient experiences of need satisfaction in college as well as instances of need frustration where participants took action to change the situation. For example, the item to assess a salient experience of autonomy in college asked participants to “Think of the moment or situation when, as a college student, you felt autonomy – like you were doing something because of your personal goals, interests, or values. Autonomy is a sense of personal freedom, that one’s actions are fully self-chosen.” After this definition, students were asked to describe a specific college experience that gave them a sense of autonomy, including where and when the experience occurred, what they were doing, and who else was involved. For each of the three psychological needs, items eliciting a memory of need satisfaction were immediately followed by an item asking about